Avrio (science fiction)

Genre: Science Fiction/fantasy

Age Restriction: Parental Discretion

Editor’s Note:

This story features a dark theme, and contains imagery that may be psychologically disturbing for some audiences. This particular story was intended for all ages to enjoy, though it may require a level of parental discretion concerning some elements presented by the author whose primary audience are of a mature age: 

18 and older.

Happy Autumn (FALL AND ENJOY!)

Avrio

By Jeffrey Arce 

aka 

Jarce ArtThor

She was walking in the shadow of death, but she wasn’t afraid. Here, she was quite comfortable.

The docent prated solemnly on, but Avrio could barely listen. He expounded some drivel about how their excessive output of greenhouse gasses will have ultimately short-circuited their environment, thus searing a path for the inevitable rise of The Sentients. What once devastated the world—paralyzing her organic ecosystems—was eventually recycled into an essential resource for continued sustenance. And from death sprang life. It was funny how some things evolved. 

The panoply before them was so strange, yet so intriguing. Inside the writhing electromagnetic barrier were items from that extraordinary world long before, carefully arranged. Avrio melted in with the crowd, wanting to have a better look. The ethereal group closed around her in the exhibit hall of the museum, coalescing densely at the display window. It always tickled her how the swell of wonder could quicken in the minds of even her most stringent of peers. They scrutinized the curious items with bewildered astonishment. Together they imagined a primitive world where complex life still needed to kill lesser organisms for their nourishment, pulling stores of solar energy forged deep within the threading of immanent proteins. The elders named it a barbaric ritual, denigrating them as blood lusting savages, but Avrio thought they were fascinating, gorgeous creatures.  

Their tools were so far removed from the modern mind it was hard to accept the raw truth that they were made from this world at all. They had crafted such things as ladles, knives, bowls, chalices, and weaponry—terribly dreamed and abundantly supplied. They made things from flesh, bone, and wood, from rock and ore. They designed tools to make other tools. It was by these special instruments they would establish a power to grow their race exponentially. But such vain self-preservation to this degree by which they had achieved would prove in time quite fatal. Their sins enervated the ecosystem, and drove their people toward a swift and complete extermination. Tools gave them life and took it all away. 

Sentients did not require any of these things. They drew energy from the carbon dioxide and methane that was in the air. They manifested power from the fierce winds, which gusted vigorously across the plains. They constructed subterranean hives to avoid conflict with the wicked jet propulsions naturally produced by a recovering planet. They had no need for towering edifices, save for the fields of massive windmills they had erected from salvaged material. There was no good reason for war, or for monetary trade, or government. They lived only for knowledge. They built communities on all corners of the globe to feed their study, and advance their race. A Sentient could explore the acidy oceans, and the starry abyss of space without a vessel to take them there. Beyond the firmament of their carbon rich environment, their cells were made to create fusion by pulling from the sun’s eternal radiance. There was no reach that a Sentient could not explore—no boundaries. They could manifest anything that was requisite for their survival, and they could adapt to even the most virulent of conditions. They did not need carnal faculties for reproduction, though, at times two Sentients could become one, and one could become many. They snowballed from motes and particles and transmuted like living molds of clay. They were formless and beautiful.

A mysterious river of consciousness had seeded their race—an enigmatic nursery, burgeoning out from a cavernous chasm like a great womb of blue fire. No scholar could agree on the make of its origin. Most have simply placed it as a kind of nursery with divine roots, though, none of them truly believed in a higher entity forged by way of intelligent design. Hypocrisy might one day prove to be the eternal plague destined to doom all forms of intellectual life. Sentients were an ascetic culture—stolid, analytical, and meticulous. They eschewed overindulgence of emotion almost to the point of overindulging in apathy, but they did lust for some things, such as learning.

Avrio was different. She was compassionate, and she loved the past, where most only anguished for the future. She frequented all of the geological institutes established throughout the solar system, trying to decipher how and why The Ones Before lived as they did. There were fragments of them spread out everywhere, as if they had exploded like some fertile flower attempting to seed the heavens. But they did not go too far. They could not even pierce the threshold of their own system with all their impressive technology.

It has been estimated that their global population peaked at an astronomical rate of ten billion souls before at last came a definitive purge. How anything could survive so many ravenous mouths was far beyond Avrio’s understanding, as clever as she was in nature. Yet still, she admired them, even at their worst.

Researchers studying samples from orbital debris have reconstructed their final decline. They have surmised that fifteen hundred thousand divisive sovereigns had abandoned their kingdoms, leaving an inundated civilization to implode behind. They stole refuge onboard a secret vessel with a callow space colony for a time. But like a cell separated from its host, these impetuous refugees and their under-prepared bodies rejected the malign effects of an artificial environment, and they deteriorated. None were immune to extinction.    

Theirs was a story of poignant demise. Avrio often wept for them when she learned more. Is it so fair this erudite species could be reduced to the moldering scraps excavated from their vast landfills of waste, which had failed to dissolve? She couldn’t know for certain. Scholars had only conjecture beyond what could be studied from their leavings. Nothing they had ever wrought in their time was indelible. The earth took it all back, but for plastic—an exceptionally perennial artifact. Everything else was erased.

Once a lush and verdant world brimming with life, the Sentients have come to know it as a sweltering, toxic wasteland, though it was still home for them. The planet could spare only a meager palette of tenuous biology as she convalesced from her geological wounds. But Sentients were an auspicious people. They have transcended the archaic fauna and flora feeding rituals, providing much needed respite for an exhausted environment.

Avrio followed their guide absently, wishing she could know more, and why they destroyed themselves. They were warned, but they persisted with their rotten habits nevertheless. It was so strange.

They were her favorite obsession. She even tried to form her walk in a way to imitate how experts have determined they might have ambulated. According to Avrio, they were the most inspiring creatures to ever have lived on the planet, and they were all gone. A wistfully tragic end to a great species.

As her group sauntered on with equanimity, they descended toward the final exhibit on the tour. She made sure to put herself in front of the crowd before they got there. The underground museum was one that she adored most. It was special. Here, every tour ended with a grand finale. It was here, deep beneath the surface where The Ones Before had retreated in their final hour.

The light opened brilliantly in the capacious hall, and a pitted rocky sepulcher materialized. Through the electric transparent veil they found a mass grave. Primitive skeletons were clambering at an ancient device that still loomed from rigid, centuries-old stone. Hollowed, dejected eyes gazed up at it, reaching for it with arachnid fingers. The fossils depicted a vast mural of bones vying to gain passage. Some were tangled together, caught in an eternal struggle for refuge, and others were folded over their knees, frozen forever in prayer. Their faces were melded into the dirt, and their arching spinal columns were suffused with igneous clay.

Avrio was ensorcelled by it, her translucent crown churning with incandescent azure like stirring embers as she marveled at the exhibit. Transfixed on the spectacle, she wondered what they were fighting for. In this place where the last of their species would recede from existence, after all they had achieved, what great mystery could have drawn them down like an inescapable eddy whirling over the drain of annihilation. At an axis in the protruding relic of stone there were two intersecting arms, outstretched like a man poised to enfold a lover into his final embrace. It was a massive cross, and it marked ground zero, where the former world past away.

Afterward, they were bustled out through the lobby, each one of them receiving a customary souvenir to enjoy as they went. Avrio glowed upon taking hers: an artificial replica of a Human skull. She stared lovingly at the gift for a time that felt like an eternity. Avrio envied their mortality, but Avrio was a Sentient, and Sentients could not die so easily.

Cradling the skull in her amorphous grasp, she cherished her prize with grateful bliss. She ensconced herself inside the empty chamber of its brain cavity. There she would study and sleep, wanting to peer through its eyes, and feel with its hands, and sample flavors with its tongue. She wanted to be human… She wanted to know how they knew, how simple and poetic they made all things that they did not know. But most of all, she wanted to taste mortality. She wanted to know death. There wasn’t anything in the world Avrio wanted more. 

#avrio

 

Human

When I lived, I could never die. 
From the deep abyss to the heavens above, there was no realm I could not claim. 
I shaped mountains into my image, I built spires to challenge the gods, and I subdued even the fiercest of beasts. 
When I lived, everything was mine. 
I bled the earth. 
I despoiled her. 
I told her that my gluttonous intrigues were sacrosanct. 
I told her that I was divine. 
She did not listen. 
I could not cozen her. 
When I lived, my hubris deceived me. 
But that was when I lived, long before my decline.

Fall

In the brutal age of information we wage a culture war. We are trying desperately to define ourselves. because after thousands of years convincing our race that we were something special, we know now with boundless evidence and certainty that we are not. And it makes us afraid. And that makes us dangerous. We reach out in a mad, blind dash for purpose. We cling to primitive, tribal knowledge. And we regress. And we destroy what we do not want to believe.  We hunt for a savior. We find only an idol: loud, biased, outlandish, perhaps charismatic, but no savior. Only human. He is as broken as his disciples. And we open our throats, and gulp down the madness, until we are drunk. With our pride heavy on our shoulders we sink to the bottom of inundated misery, and we drown there. Forgotten by a hundred million uncaring years, we are turned to limestone, we are turned to oil, and we become the very thing we so insouciantly died for. 

Reflection

In Geology class she learned that it takes a spate of virulent components to trigger a global extinction event. Not a celestial collision, nor climate change is sufficient enough alone to achieve this. It takes behavior as well: how a species will collectively choose to respond to such crises will ultimately decide their fate.

***

     The oscillating red and blue lights from the police cruiser washed over her dejected face in grim sequence. Megan let that flashing glare burn across her eyes, wishing it could burn away her memories. They gave her a blanket. She was confused by this gesture but she took it anyway. She was trembling fiercely, but it had nothing to do with the cold. Even as the sun was waning the air was still quite balmy. Fear put the chill in her. The blanket could do nothing to assuage that. Some primitive part of her mind compelled her to throw the blanket over her head, wrapping it taught around her shoulders. Under here the monsters can’t get me. She relaxed on the rear bumper of an ambulance and she hid beneath it, wanting to die. The cruel irony was that only a few hours ago she almost had.

     Her peers were streaming this way and that. They floated by her like phantoms from some awful dream. It was all so very surreal. Police took information on clipboards, stoically. Kids clustered together bawling in each other’s arms. Some were blithely watching, smiling and taking selfies. Megan could only sit there absently. She couldn’t hear a thing. The uncertain staccato bursts were still trapped in her ears. A storm of emotion was clutching at her heart, but she swallowed it down, turning sickly in her effort.

     An officer walked her fretful mother and father at last to meet her. They broke from him and seized Megan hard into their grateful embrace. Her mother wailed woefully in her ear. That hurt some, but it snapped the girl back to her unfortunate present, and for a moment those horrible sounds were not repeating on her mind. A detective spoke a few words with her father before they were permitted to leave. He told him, “If she can remember anything else, just give me a call.” Megan only wanted the night to go away from her memory forever.

     The drive home was long, quiet, and unnerving. Flashes of the boy’s anguished, terrible hatred flashed again over Megan’s eyes and she gasped. It was the first sign of life they got form their daughter since leaving the crime scene. Her mother turned to look back at her, startled. She asked if she was all right.

     “Of course she isn’t all right,” her father decided before bewailing some other dark conflictions. “The school should have had some way to prevent this,” he said. “And how did he get those weapons? I tell you how, because those gun-rights advocates rule the country and our elected representatives don’t do anything about it, and…” on and on it went. He would conclude his harangue talking about how “that kid was mental,” and that he was an “evil piece of—.” Her father—high in his passions—was just one choice phrase after the next. It took some time for her mother to finally make the only sensible proclamation since the brutal car-ride had begun, “Let us not talk about this anymore.”

     Megan was silent until they were home. She walked through the door, and then she froze. Her mother and father watched her. They stood tentatively at the threshold, not knowing what they could possibly do to ease her trauma. Without looking back at them Megan said in a poignant voice, “Thank you for picking me up, I…I think I’m gonna go to bed, now.”

     “Do you need us…” his wife put a firm hand against his shoulder to shut him up. They let her go.

     Megan slipped quietly into her bathroom. It was all for her. Mom and Dad thought she was at the age now, she would need her own place to decompress and do her teenage-girl stuff. She mostly used it to shower, put on her makeup, and have a private place to chat about boys with her girlfriends on the phone. She looked at her sallow, dispirited expression in the mirror. Her flaxen hair fell in lazy ropes, sticky with dry hairspray, and hanging in clumps of misery down her shoulders. She had dark lines running from her eyes where her eyeliner had fallen apart from a cascade of tears. Her hands were still trembling. In her reflection she remembered Daddy’s little girl. Her parents thought she was an angel: the same girl who won every horseback-riding award in Four H, and smiled prettily, and respectfully at all of her elders. But she was sixteen. And she was not that innocent anymore. Her parents never got to know that part of her—how she was with her friends. But the mirror knew.

     The mirror saw her and her friends ruthlessly hectoring Scott Sanders before he did what he did. They berated him for being a creep, ugly, and poor. They regarded him with disgust and disparagement at every opportunity. He was so strange with his pasty skin, saturnine disposition, and choppy black hair. They suggested that he should kill himself on social media. They spit in his food at lunch. Together with her girls they fed on his despair like a pack of malicious wolves. They didn’t see it like that though; it was all just kid shenanigans. The mirror saw it for what it really was.

     Scott brought the gun in; it was one of those scary kinds. Where he got it, how he got it: those were questions that did not matter to her. What is he going to do with that thing? That was her only concern. He sprayed the classroom with bullets, unrelenting. It all happened so fast. Scott found her cowering under a desk. He looked at her. She saw his morbid pimply, starved face in that mirror. Pools of blood puddled underneath him. The survivors were screaming down the hall, their voices receding as they went. They were the only two left. He fell to his knees, glaring at her. Megan remembered whimpering, and begging. But he never put the gun on her. Instead, he set the smoldering barrel under his own chin, reaching awkwardly for the rifle’s trigger. He said, “This is what you wanted?”

     “Scott, I’m sorr—.”

     She threw her shaking hands over her face and howled when the gun thundered. Fire ignited under the kid’s jaw, shattering it in a blow that surged violently through his skull.

     Megan was suddenly screaming in the mirror as she had done then, and her parents were at the bathroom door trying to get in. They could not. It was locked. She was only a teenager doing teenage-girl stuff. Still, their little girl lamented at her own reflection, “I hate you!” And then she thought darkly, you should kill yourself… 

     She wished it was only a dream. In a fiction it could have been, in some clever twist, some trick of the conscience that would teach her the fault in her ways and change her for the better. But this was real life. This happened. And she will never forget. And she will never forgive herself. And on and on it goes…     

***

     Pointing blame is an easy thing to do. But in the end if we do nothing about ourselves, and our archaic, tribalistic ways, we will fall just like our ill-fated progenitors before us had. Extinction is only a few more bad decisions away. Its seed rooted by the reflection in the mirror.

               

Author’s commentary:

     I am not a saint.

     I have done some awful things in my life that I regret, some that I torture myself over. I did a lot of dumb shit for a punch line. I used to think I was being funny, but I have gown to learn that I—like most in our culture—am just very sick. I have teased, I have gossiped, and ridiculed, and laid blame on everything and everyone that wasn’t in my own reflection. I don’t pretend to know all the answers; sometimes our arrogance can trick us into believing we are smarter than we truly are, or well prepared for whatever the world can throw at us. But we are not. I recognize that many refuse to see bullying as an epidemic, and I truly do not believe that it can be the only factor in this situation, but to deny it is a problem in our culture is just dangerous. I draw caricatures for a living and I get to sit with young people a lot. They pretend I don’t exist as they gossip cruelly about every one of the young locals that they know; they can get ugly. But they shrug it off insouciantly as if it were nothing more than simple locker-room talk. I do not like this new trend. It is worrisome. It is terrifying.

I don’t like talking about such topics, but sometimes having some kind of commentary—any at all—is better than being shocked, thoughts and prayers, and then going right back to pretending it never happened just to have it happen again and again the next month. As a kid Columbine frightened me, and 9/11 scarred my soul. We will never understand the sort of trauma this new generation is facing on the daily. Self identity crisis, self-worth, disillusionment, trolling, hatred, murder, suicide, mass shootings, shaming, sex, lies, corruption, pollution, war, divide, destruction: our environment is poisoned by our behavior, and we expect our children to know better somehow. Our very President is a goddamn salacious provocateur reality-show-star troll, who is beloved by many—god help us all. There isn’t much I can do about any of this, but I can reflect on it at least. I’ve learned that some of the problem is in myself, and knowing its there I can perhaps start doing healthier things, thinking healthier thoughts, to try and remedy it. That said this was my story on the matter.

     My intent in this story is to show many levels of tribal-like affect on the bitterly disputed, egregious subject of school-shootings: partisan politicians who fight for gun-advocates that spin gun rights grossly for their own gain, and do nothing to try to prevent a heinous act from happening again. Shortsighted civilian perspective who only include facts that support their arguments. Parents who are far too busy in their own lives to pay close enough attention to how poisonous society is molding their children. How differently kids act when their own social tribes are influencing them, and young people coming up in a world where divisiveness is just a regular part of modern culture. And then I had to narrow it all down to 1000 words to try and meet the restrictions of a flash fiction article that was calling for submissions. As you can tell I added much more since deciding to keep the piece for myself. The story was written exclusively to match their guidelines and theme. It was rejected of course, and since I don’t think I want to use if for anything else, and because I think some conclusions suggested in the story I thought were important to reflect on, I figured I’d just post it to my blog. Thanks for reading!

Original Entry Guidelines:

(short short version)

We’re happy to announce the theme of our next special issue: Stories for Dead People. Though morbid it may seem, we think it allows writers to send in ghosts, and zombies, which is always fun, but it also opens the door to a celebration of some fallen heroes. And we hope it will encourage some of you to get angry, the way we get angry every time there’s another school shooting or another police shooting or another needless killing of people not given the protection they deserver. It’s a broad canvas. There are a lot of dead people out there, a lot of stories to tell.

Monsters on a Mountain (a fanfiction)

No matter how fast she could run, no matter where she tried for cover, or what wood she could get herself lost in, or ruined suburb she could thread through, those red eyes were always there behind her, smoldering in the night like burning embers. 

She was still only a child, but she knew fear better than any living man could still walk the earth. The red eyes belonged to a monster. And that monster was coming for her. Her muscles were too young to escape it. She fell at last, panting, exhausted. Sweat drenched her. She was terrified. She would have screamed if she had anymore energy in her to do so. Instead, she put the last of her strength in her arms and she crawled. The dry dirt beneath her felt like a hot desert’s sand between her fingers, even though it was the black of night, but still she heaved. There was no respite from the heat anymore. 

Twisted metal, and old charred rubble surrounded her. The skeleton that remained of the world of yesterday fascinated her youthful imagination. She always wanted to know what that world was like, before their own massive stockpile of antiquated death was launched against the world—before they took the world. 

Now it was coming for her, like it came for everything: the beasts with the red eyes. She could hear the weight of their footfalls drawing in. It was behind her, like all that wonder she had for the fallen civilizations that made them. She rolled on her back, seeing it with wide-eyes through a curtain of sodden bangs sticking to her face. It was awful. It’s eyes pierced the night, and it’s silver skeleton hand reached out to grab her. 

Natasha sprung from her bedding with a gasp in her throat. After a few gulps of rotten air she new at last it was all only a dream... but it wasn’t. It was all very real, and inexorable. Nothing can stop it... nothing. She looked. There were people around, of course, but they were sparse, and miserable. Silhouettes of the life moving about the ghetto were thrown on the broken walls by candlelight. They huddled in their corners with what scraps remained to remind them of their lost humanity. She saw a mother and her child, close in arms, whimpering. The adult wept for the life she wasted in front of the beloved box, where the child cried for that life he could never know. Natasha at least liked to think they were kin, it was a romantic idea in her head; part of her own stubborn humanity that just won’t die. They were watching a television, but it was only the frame of one. Grandfathered survivors had told her once how it used to be, when there was power, and there wasn’t a care. But it could have all been bullshit, for all she could know. That magical box—as it was said—told them endless stories about man’s triumphs, and even their humilities. She wished she could have seen it then. But she was born after the cities had gone up in flames. Now, all the mother and son, or stranger and waif could do was watch a fire eat away at debris that had been piled inside where the tube once had dwelt. It was such a very poignant image to behold. 

Something hurt. Her legs were sticky in strange places. Natasha did not feel well. An unusual sickness turned at the pit of her stomach. She removed her threadbare sheets, and she suddenly knew it at once: It was very bad. 

“No,” she panicked. 

Quickly she scrambled out from her bedding and she was running, like in her dream. The couple in front of the relic television watched her go, their eyes curious, and sore from the wistful tears.

When Natasha was alone she ripped down her pants, and only stared at it, not knowing what to do. The hollow wind howled through the decrepit complex. Distant on the breeze, she could hear the high scream of the droning air vents on the patrolling Sky Hunters. She could not let them find her, not like this. She then hurriedly took off her top, leaving herself standing naked under the stars. All of their shelters in the ghetto were without roofs. It was so the warden could always watch them as they lived, scrutinizing—studying how they lived.

Natasha would have to be quick about the matter, and she would have to burn the evidence. Her maturity was becoming vastly difficult to conceal, but she had to, for as long as she could, so long as she lived there. She had not grown too full in the breasts, so that was at least one blessing she did not have to fret for, but now she was bleeding. It ran hot, thick-bodied and copious down her thighs. She spit on her bundled up shirt and she scrubbed, sobbing all the while she worked. 

Her blood was a rare thing. They kept a close watch on her development all the long years she had been trapped in captivity. A cult were left as her guardians, recording her every change. At first, in her naive  innocence, she was proud to have them, calling them mommy, and daddy, and uncle, joining them in ritual. But that was before she knew the truth: that they had meant to harvest her when she would come of age. 

“The Time Has Come!” 

She was too late. Standing there bare as a new born under the cloud flanked moon, Mommy had found her. 

Her vanity prompted her to fold her arms around her body, and she begged them to show mercy. She asked them to keep her secret. But it was useless. Before long they were dragging her by both arms. Her tattered jeans clung to her foot as they took her up the mountain, where They were waiting for her—the ones with the red eyes. She wailed, and the cult sang, rejoicing in her horror. The beauty in the stars high above mocked her naked and scourged body, exposed for her prey to feast on. They threw her down at their feet. The cult in unison dropped to their knees and they prayed. They thought these things were gods; they have been lost in this world far too long. They were not gods—They were demons. Several of them stepped out from the darkness, their silver bodies glistening in the night. Their Sky Hunters slicing the darkness with high-beams, like great birds of steel floating over the scene. The beasts moved hard on her, their eyes blazing red as blood, always analyzing and calculating. They were always precise, and that’s the true reason why they could not be stopped. Nobody was as strong as the brain that knew only math, logic, and balance. 

Natasha stopped crying. She sat up on her knees and glared at them. There was nothing more left for her to do—it was over. 

Her blood was too special. The cult stripped off her clothes, and that was bad, but They would strip her flesh. That was what they wanted. The machines encircled her, and they wasted no time. The whine of gears was all she could hear beyond her own screams as they tediously cut her open, and drew her apart, collecting every drop of blood that sprayed in the process. She remembered seeing shattered pieces of the massive letters that used to spell the word Hollywood there on that strange mountain, but now it was where the beasts did their malign work, and where their sycophants worshipped them as slaves. 

It was a long time before she was dead. They were called T-800’s. They were different from the ones before; they were worse. They could be more human, and that was an egregious thing anything with such a mind as Skynet could ever possibly achieve. Natasha thought that before she finally went. She was grateful for death, though, at least in death she did not have to face the impossible trials humans only had left to confront before their final descent. Only a miracle of invention could save them. And that miracle was far from their mortal reach. That would take a mind with more time to be so dangerously ambitious. Or perhaps so cunning that lack there of would dare challenge them to think in their final moments so brilliantly. Still, none of that mattered for her anymore. In death, all was forgiven, forgotten, and done.

#fanfic

#terminator

***Terminator

Inspired by characters created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd***